Serial numbers

[Stuart Pedaso]

Totally agree with the above posts in regard to many of the supermarket quality speakers most often discussed here.

However, when you filter out the purely subjective BS from the above posts and start shopping high resolution, high accuracy monitors, you'll find they are often built as matched pairs with ALL of the transducers and electrical components being hand picked, evaluated, tested, and finally matched such that the voicing, impedance, sensitivity, filter knee points and slopes, and ESR of each filter section are as precisely close as possible.

With some high quality loudspeakers, if they don't have matching or consecutive S/N's, you do not have a matched pair, simple as that. While the differences may be small, even too small to be audible to the average listener, they are quite real, measurable, and marketable.

I'm reminded of SPICA offerings. Seems I've read each unit was tweaked, measured and fully documented, and selected as matching pairs for marketing.

Off the top of my head, there are two pairs of speakers in my collection with consecutive serial numbers: M&K Satellite 1-A's purchased new, and a minty pair of silver Minimus 7 eBayed by the original owner.

The M&K's were manufactured as a pair and shipped together in a master carton.

The Minimus 7's ... pure dumb luck.

To my ears, each unit of either pair sounds identical to its sibling. Unfortunately, I've never had a listening room with acoustically identical right and left sides.